Will this memory upgrade help with VS8?

Keith C · Post by **Keith C** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 5:40 pm

Hi,
I'm not very technical but I would like to upgrade the RAM of my HP Pavilion 7965 PC from 512 to 1024.

The CPU is an AMD Atlon 1.6 - AMD say this runs like an Intel 1.8. This RAM upgrade will cost £113 for 2 x 512 sdram pc133 modules.

Will this make any appreciable difference to the way UVS8 performs on my PC? If so, in what way. Will it be worth the cost?

Many thanks for any help.

Additional info:

Motherboard: ASUS A7A266

Manufacturer Hewlett Packard

Model Pavilion 7965 (SDRAM)

Standard Memory 512MB (Removeable)

Maximum Memory 1024MB

Number of Slots 2 Slots (2 Banks of 1)

Notes All memory slots are occupied. Remove memory in order to upgrade.

168-pin DIMM Banking: 3 (3 banks of 1)
184-pin DIMM Banking: 2 (2 banks of 1)
Chipset: Ali MAGiK 1 (M1647)
DDR SDRAM Frequencies: PC1600 and PC2100
Error Detection Support: Non-ECC only
Graphics Support: AGP 4X
Max Unbuffered DDR SDRAM: 2048MB
Max Unbuffered SDR SDRAM: 3072MB
Module Types Supported: Unbuffered only
SDR SDRAM Frequencies: PC100 and PC133
Supported DRAM Types: SDR SDRAM and DDR SDRAM
USB Support: 1.x Compliant

kebrinton · Post by **kebrinton** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 5:56 pm

I noticed a difference going from 500MB to 1GB RAM. But I started with a P4 3HT machine.

My previous machine was Athlon 1.3 500 RAM which ran VS8 fine, but was slow saving and rendering. Though I considered adding RAM, video card, etc., for a long time, finally I realized a faster machine was going to be needed sooner or later.

Keith

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 6:51 pm

I agree with Keith, the extra RAM will help, but don't expect miracles. The old CPU without SSE instructions will always be the bottleneck for media encoding.

Keith C · Post by **Keith C** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 11:28 pm

THoff wrote:I agree with Keith, the extra RAM will help, but don't expect miracles. The old CPU without SSE instructions will always be the bottleneck for media encoding.

Thanks Torsten...what does SSE mean?

Also my MB will apparently support an Athlon 2400 - will this make any difference either?

I just want the preview window rendering to be a bit smoother.

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 12:18 am

SSE, SSE2 and SSE3 are extensions to the Intel x86 instruction set that are specific to the handling of multimedia. They significantly speed up the encoding and decoding of video and audio, provided an application knows how to take advantage of these extensions.

The old SSE extensions are actually supported by the Athlon 2400, but not the newer SSE2 and SSE3 extensions. Your current Athlon 1300 supports none of these extensions, including SSE. If your motherboard does in fact support an Athlon 2400, it would give you the most bang for the buck -- more so than the extra RAM would. It's also dirt-cheap, about US$ 70.